Bromer Booksellers (Boston) is offering for sale a copy of the Chaucer rebound by Hannah Brown; it was on display at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair earlier this month and is now priced at $125,000.

Brown’s binding (see above) was inspired by a series of embroideries by May Morris and is based on Chaucer’s The Legend of Goode Wimmen, with each woman “represented on the covers by a species of flower or butterfly that bears the same name.” (Brown’s blog discusses her work on the binding in some detail.)

We had listed this as an unlocated copy in our Census (3.189): it was once owned by the Rev. Roderick Terry of Newport, R.I. (see his bookplate below) and later by Saul Cohn of East Orange, N.J. On this blog we have also recorded a recent sale of the book in 2017 (Terry–Cohn copy to be sold).

¶ "I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters. I have always been a great admirer of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, and of the earlier printing which took its place." — William Morris